It’s Friday, everyone!  It’s the perfect day to announce the winner of our first official giveaway.  The lucky winner will receive an autographed, hardcover edition of Meghan Carter‘s brand new book, The Meghan Method.  This is a great book for the creative DIYer who wants to decorate her (of his!) home right the first time not after making costly design mistakes.

With summer almost over…sob…it’s almost time to bring the focus back inside especially if you live on the west coast.  Maybe it’s time to rethink your furniture layout, paint a wall or hang a few new pictures to freshen things up to get you through the colder months.  Painting is big on my list.  I’ve got a stack of furniture in my garage that needs some love before the rains come.  And I’m still on that hunt for the perfect sofa.

Recycle Buy Vintage

Anyways, you probably don’t want to hear me blather on about my never-ending to-do lists!  Right?  You’d rather know who won, more specifically if was you!  I wish we had copies for everybody including one for each of us but alas we’re not Oprah.  So, without further adieu…

Present & Correct

…the luck winner is Girlie!  Would you mind sending us an email at birchandbird(at)gmail(dot)com?  We’d love to get your prize in the mail as soon as we can.

Well, that was fun!  I think we’ll have to do giveaways around here more often.  Enjoy the last weekend before school starts again!

I’d love to go to design school and always have but it’s never quite worked into my plans so far, unless  you count an 8 week course at our local college.  Awhile back, I found myself searching for instructional design books or even text books that would go into greater detail about the design process and fill me in on all the secrets that end in great design.  But I came up empty-handed.   Then one day, Lily and I got an email asking us if we would kindly review the brand new book  The Meghan Method by Meghan Carter.  Of course!  We love books.  And it didn’t hurt (and may have made  us blush a little) that she mentioned the Birch + Bird blog as an online design resource among many of our favourites on p. 82.

The Meghan Method isn’t the usual design book, you know, the ones with the glossy pictures of fabulous over the top rooms that are inspiring and at the same time discouraging.  This book is all about you and your design hopes and dreams.  It is exactly what I was looking for.  If you’ve always wanted to learn a little more about what goes on in the head of your favourite interior designer and can’t afford to hire one, Meghan walks you through from inspiration to finished room.  It’s a hardcover design workbook, at your service.

After completing not one but two degrees, Meghan realized that she hadn’t been following her dreams.  She had always wanted to be an Interior Designer but with two degrees behind her already, she couldn’t justify another.  So, Ask the Decorator, was born.  Her online home-improvement and decorating show, features product reviews, design tips and of course, her interviews with experts in the design field from whom she gained her wealth of information.  Now, with all the tricks of the trade, she published her first book and is passing all this knowledge on to us.

all images from  Meghan Carter

And we would love to pass along a hardcover and autographed edition of  The Meghan Method to one of our loyal readers!  If you would like to win some DIY design inspiration, here’s what you need to do…

1.  Leave a comment at the end of this post.

2.  Become a BirchandBird Facebook fan.

3.  Follow @Birchandbird on Twitter.

Oh, if you do win and follow Meghan’s advice, we’d LOVE to see your finished space.  We will announce the lucky winner on September 2nd!  Good luck!